Lee McConnell, Scotland's glamorous Olympic hopeful

Scottish athletics’ glamour girl talks Beijing, her hopes for glory and why the only good seat is a comfy one

Lee McConnell is looking forward to the sofas in Beijing. The washing machines will be welcome, too. She has seen photographs and, as athletes' villages go, China's comes close to luxury.

"It might sound like a strange thing to be excited about, but sometimes there are just hard seats at the athletes' village and I can't sit on them for long because my back gets stiff," the 400m runner explains.

"And the last thing you want to be doing when you're competing is having to trek down to the launderette."

It will certainly be an improvement on her training facilities at home. Just two weeks before the start of the Olympics, she is standing on the uneven concrete slabs of the pavilion at her modest training track, where the grass is overgrown and the gates are secured at night with rusting padlocks. Athletes train here in Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, beneath the